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I've been clamoring for a SharePoint Reporting solution. Sure the SharePoint Usage reports are cute for the site administrator such as the search reports, and viewing the audit logs on a site. If you aren't even seeing site usage data this troubleshooting page might be helpful. Note there is the WSS usage processing AND the MOSS shared service for Usage processing that both need to be enabled... but what about farm reports?
Quest software - Capacity Manager for SharePoint (very interesting reports on Storage with a focus on SQL). There is a free trial. There are some interesting capacity reports, including growth and trending reports on the content databases with the capacity planner.
From their site: "Capacity Manager makes it easy for database administrators to manage SharePoint. The eye-catching reports provide graphs and charts on:
Here's a good verbose blog post on different ways to pull usage data from SharePoint. It's a bit dated, but there is some good mention of getting at it via FPRPC, SharePoint Designer, the OM, and the web UI.
I've got a call open with WebTrends to tell me "how to configure" WebTrends to work with WSS/MOSS. They tell me they have support for SharePoint, but it just needs to be configured. It's possible with nearly all web reporting usage products to give you the classic usage stuff (users, browsers, OSs, transfer, session lengths, etc..), but when you get into pages and paths through the site you'll find it's not what you need. This is where I'm hoping to see partners step up.
Good info Joel.... you should also add the capability to view your usage reports inside of SPD as well.
On another topic somewhat related is the viewing of your SharePoint Logs when troubleshooting. I tested and did a small review on IdevFactory's SWAT tool recently and found there log reader very usefull where you can really filter out information to make searching for issues painless. You can read the review here http://bobfox.net/spblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=73
Im planning on doing a quick screencast to illustrate this. On speaking with the developers this tool was a second thought addition to the tool. Cool stuff.
Whoops.. you did mention SPD :) Pays to read the entire article.
i definitely agree this is an area in which sharepoint is lacking. i'm currently working on a project to provide farm wide stats for our mms customers. joel i'd be glad to give you a demo when we're complete
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Hi Joel,
Did you get an update from Web Trends? I am currently faced wih the same dilemma here at Centrica with a slight difference.
We are using Web Trends 8 here.
We are at SPS2003 and looking to migrate to MOSS - although the same problem still faces us. Would be great to know if they have come back to you with a resolution.
Thank you.
Rgds,
Saqib
Okay Quest Capacity Manager, while useful, isn't exactly a usage reporting solution for sharepoint.
I'd be interested in hearing what webtrends has to say.
I've got some great feedback on this post. I will post the results I get from Web Trends. I also look forward to results from Sean and in a thread with other internal folk working with reporting solutions in relation to Web Trends.
See also WEBOBS
http://www.webobs.com/V2/en-us/default.aspx
EROL
http://sharepointerol.blogspot.com/
http://clubmoss2007.org/default.aspx
What about host header-named site collections? Unless I've made a configuration oversight in my farm, traffic to these sites doesn't seem to show up in IIS logs. WebTrends would need to process WSS logs as well to capture usage info for these sites.
Correction to my earlier comment about how to track usage reporting for host header site collections - the IIS log entries for these sites appear to be showing up in the SSP web app's logs. Unexpected, but that works!
Hi Joel - we worked with MCS when we deployed SPS 2003 to create a utility that converted the SharePoint log files into W3C compliant files that WebTrends could parse. Likely created some of the DNA that turned into the MS log parser. While not elegant, this got us some mileage but analytics in SharePoint (all known current and future versions!) still needs attention. Ideally either there should be a way for high end analytics packages (Omniture, Visual Sciences etc ...) to tap into all of the events captured in the proprietary SharePoint logs but at a minimum people can always embed tracking beacons on pages for basic measurements.
One of my customers recently deployed intranet site on MOSS 2007. After a while we wanted to analyze
Any one internal to Microsoft should look at http://msblogs/corybu/default.aspx Cory is working on putting up his tool that provides usage data for SharePoint. I'll be sure to promote it here when it is available.
Also, I am gathering data from the internal MSW team on their experience with WebTrends.
Sam, I do think you captured it well. Bots aka little .js scripts to capture usage on pages for tools like Omniture and WebTrends are good solutions today. I hope to get people talking about what they've done and what needs they are getting addressed.
Joel,
Please keep us posted on any feedback with WebTrends. You're right in that the Usage Reports were cute but I found them to be limited and inconsistent. :( Dont really want to go the logparser route because that involves working with Operations folks. ;)